Pennsylvania steel firm hit with second-highest pollution penalty ever under the Clean Water Act, USA Tim Breen, Greenwire associate editor
A Pennsylvania steel company has been hit by a federal judge with the second-highest penalty ever under the Clean Water Act, made to pay about $8.25 million for repeated spills of oil, grease, zinc, chromium, nickel and other metals into the Kiskimenetas and Allegheny rivers. The penalty doubles the economic gain -- an estimated $4.1 million -- that the Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp. saved by not having proper environmental controls at four plants, according to the Justice Department, which brought the lawsuit in 1995 on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Companies who violate the Clean Water Act face penalties much higher than any savings they think they will achieve by avoiding or delaying environmental investment," said Thomas Sansonetti, head of DOJ's environment and natural resources division. "This penalty is a fitting consequence for Allegheny Ludlum's corporate disregard for compliance prior to the federal lawsuit."
In Pittsburgh, District Court Judge Robert Cindrich penalized the company for 1,122 days of violations. Over that time, Allegheny Ludlum avoided the costs of staffing four treatment plants 24 hours a day, modernizing a waste treatment plant, and refusing requests from its own engineers for a number of projects to reduce oil and acid spills, according to DOJ. The company is now complying with CWA, but only after years of state enforcement actions and the 1995 federal suit, it noted. Go to http://www.greenwire.com/ Greenwire Feb. 27, story 7:
